Friday, January 15, 2016

Muhammad Asad was born Leopold Weiss, an Austrian Jew. He
was able to feel the intrinsic truth of Islam through personal experience and
study. So he entered that faith in the past century. He provided services to
the then nascent Pakistan, by working on its ideological foundations. He concluded
that the parliamentary system could be considered as the modern equivalent of
the function of Islamic concept of shoora. He explained his position in his
brief work called “The Principles of State and Government in Islam”. Thus he
tried to justify the existence of a modern parliamentary nation state working
on Islamic principles as the answer to Islamic government in the modern world.

Today we are at a better position to understand the
validity of this assumption through hindsight. The experiment that is Pakistan
has shown us the futility of trying to implement Islam top-down. Islam, by
definition, can only be practiced based on the methodology that the Prophet
(SWAS) taught us, i.e. from the grassroots changing one heart at a time. When a
critical mass of the population has internalized the message, they will
willingly submit to every Islamic command. Trying to ram Islamic Law down the
throat of a population that does not even understand the holistic concept and
implications of Islamic monotheism is a recipe for failure.

The strange marriage of Islam and the modern nation state has
resulted in a unique psyche of a people. State indoctrination through its
educational systems and media has produced a nation whose social problems can
only be understood by understanding this psyche. The education system from grade 1 to university teaches a
form of Islam which is intertwined with modern nationalism. It does this
through its “Islamic & Pakistan Studies” curriculum, which is a compulsory
subject for all. Through it, the student learns how the Muslims have a unique
identity as compared to other religions and how this justifies that they should
have a separate homeland. It is argued that if they did not separate from the
Hindus they would have dominated them economically. Thus use of an ideology of
deprivation to divide people is ingrained in the Pakistani mind. This scarcity
mentality, of being a taker rather than being a giver, drives the average
Pakistani. The subsequent shattering of Pakistani society into ethnic groups
and sects is a direct result of this mentality. Every group is ready to work
together to address economic and social deprivations and threatens to separate.

This ideology shows how the seeds of materialism that were
sown at the conception of the Pakistani state have resulted in a complete
tearing apart the social fabric of the current Pakistani society. Everybody
from the head of the state to the common man is running the economic race,
except a very small minority. People have organized themselves into groups and
they feel no remorse to oppress others for their own economic and social
well-being. The end result has been a total collapse of human values in a society
where even brothers fight for their inheritance. Cheating, violence, theft, bribery,
killing, kidnapping for ransom, etc. are common everyday happenings. People
have become so used to them that it does not affect them anymore.

In this warped way of thinking all concepts are turned on
their head to give a new meaning. Learning, which has a very high status in
Islam, is now engaged in only to earn. In general, people have given up
reading. They read just enough to earn their degrees and progress in their
careers. For the most part, government only invests in education which can provide the
graduates jobs. There is almost no investment in the social sciences,
which are so important. The social sciences are the keys to developing human
thought and consciousness. Unfortunately, not many bright Pakistani minds are
pursuing them.

The holistic concepts of Islam are so brutally mashed to
justify nationalism that they have become enigmatically difficult for the
normal citizens to reinterpret. The fact that they have already studied “Islamic
Studies” throughout their education deludes them into thinking that they
already understand everything. The distance from Arabic, causes the average
Pakistani to grope at different “isms” which they have studied in English to
try to explain Islam to themselves. Many educated Pakistanis try to understand
the Quran though English or Urdu translations. Although, they certainly gain
some gems of wisdom in such a study, what they can achieve through direct
Arabic reading and study is incomparably vaster. It will affect their hearts and minds more. Such
is the miracle of the Quran. The Sufi traditions of Pakistan which were
influenced by Hindu practices, have transformed Islam so far from its pristine
original, that the ordinary Pakistani has trapped himself into centuries of un-Islamic
concepts and practices.

Thus we have a society today that is steeped into
materialism and uses Islam to complement, justify and perpetuate that
materialism. For the most part, the population is deluded that they understand
the religion. Generally, their concepts, culture and
practices are alien to the Islamic ethos. They tend to justify every good or bad thing they do using the
religion. They are excited into a jingoistic high at the mention of Islam. They get very emotional on hearing hollow slogans which politician after politician has exploited. No
doubt, many Pakistanis have left Islam or became disenchanted by it, by observing
the society around them. Many migrants to Western countries shed their religion when they shed their Pakistani citizenship due to the tight coupling of the two in their minds. The hope for Pakistanis as well as all Muslims, is to
return to the pristine teaching of Islam through learning and practice. The
unnatural wedding of Islam to nationalism and the crude manner that it has been implemented has inadvertently caused strange consequences in the Pakistani psyche. Only when the psyche of a critical mass of people has
reformed, can we hope for a reformation at a macro level. Until then the real
struggle is to reform oneself and those around us through the prophetic
methodology of tarbiyya.

Sunday, January 10, 2016

It seems almost all there is to life is related to our perception
of it. People who have a habit of harboring positive thoughts have a happy life
while those who keep complaining, experience bad consequences in life. In the
process, they experience difficulties, miseries and depression. This perception
has a direct effect on the quality of one’s life. This is a natural law. Indeed
Allah (SWT) says in a Hadith Qudsi:

Allah the Most High said, ‘I am as My servant thinks
(expects) I am. I am with him when he mentions Me. If he mentions Me to
himself, I mention him to Myself; and if he mentions Me in an assembly, I
mention him in an assembly greater than it. If he draws near to Me a hand’s
length, I draw near to him an arm’s length. And if he comes to Me walking, I go
to him at speed’

One of the scholars once advised: “if you see someone
carrying many glasses in a tray in an unbalanced fashion, do not even say that
the glasses will fall. Indeed if you do so they will certainly fall.”

The Prophet’s (SWAS) life is full of so many events in which
having hope seemed so incredibly difficult. The changes of things going his way
were so small, yet time and again he never lost hope or became depressed. On
the outskirts of Makkah when they were just about to be caught outside the cave
of Thawr he reassured Abu Bakr (RA):

“If you do not aid the Prophet - Allah has already aided him
when those who disbelieved had driven him out [of Makkah] as one of two, when they
were in the cave and he said to his companion, "Do not grieve; indeed
Allah is with us." And Allah sent down his tranquility upon him and
supported him with angels you did not see and made the word of those who
disbelieved the lowest, while the word of Allah - that is the highest. And
Allah is Exalted in Might and Wise” (9:40)

Indeed optimism was a prominent characteristic of his
personality. He has been reported to have said:

“O son of Adam! You are free to choose from what befalls you
in your life, between despair and hope, pessimism and optimism. However, you
shall find your hope and optimism with Allah, and your despair and pessimism
with Satan, 'in order that he may cause grief to the believers. But he cannot
harm them in the least, except as Allah permits' [Al-Mujdilah: 10].” (Bukhari
and Muslim).

Certainly, having good positive thoughts and good opinion
about Allah is a form of worship. He (SWAS) said:

“Hoping for good is also an act of worship of Allah”
(Tirmidhi and Hakim).

Regarding persisting with patience in difficult times, he (SWAS)
is reported to have said:

“Whoever abstains from asking others, Allah will make him
contented, and whoever tries to make

himself self-sufficient, Allah will make
him self-sufficient. And whoever remains patient, Allah will make him patient.
Nobody can be given a blessing better and greater than patience” (Bukhari).

As we approach the end of times, the global news seems
sadder by the day. Life seems to get harder and harder. With a loss of human
values in modern societies, crime, violence, indecency, etc. keeps increasing.
Our younger generation faces challenges that we never dreamed about. Despite
all the atmosphere of negativity, we must not give into complaining for indeed
if we take the time to reflect deeply we will realize that despite all these
problems we enjoy countless blessings.

Try to reflect and write down only 3
things in your diary that you should give thanks about for that day on a daily
basis. If you do this exercise persistently, your outlook, health, the quality
of your life and the events that will proceed from it will all improve.
Countless scientific experiments in the field of Positive Psychology have shown
this to be true. See http://www.health.harvard.edu/newsletter_article/in-praise-of-gratitude

Remove all negatives from your life. Stop listening and
paying attention to those who only complain. Trash your TV as even watching the
news every day is a recipe for chronic depression these days. Replace them with
positives. Volunteer in activities with group of people who are improving the
condition of humanity. Be with those who are positive and their positivity will
affect you.

Know that having good hopes is a natural medicine to a
fulfilled and happy life. You have the power as to what attitude you adopt. Be
positive. Allah (SWT) loves positive people who are engaged in constructive
activity and do not have time for negativity. Engage in exercises that build
gratitude. It has shown to have amazing therapeutic value. Be with positive
people and cut off all avenues of negativity from your lives.